Gliederung

Introduction

Ebola virus and its closest relative, Marburg virus, belong to the most dangerous infectious diseases worldwide. Up to 90% of infections lead to death within a few days. News of new outbreaks usually are well covered by the media and sometimes lead to the advice to avoid travelling to afflicted regions although clinical evidence suggests that diseases may not be easily transmitted to casual contacts.

Material and Methods

Using specially designed statistical techniques, we analyze data sets collected in Kikwit (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1995, Mbomo (Republic of the Congo) in 2003 and in Gulu (Uganda) in 2000 to estimate the transmission parameters of Ebola haemorrhagic fever and use these parameters to calculate its basic reproduction number. The basic reproduction number R0 summarizes the ability of a pathogen to spread within a population. It is the expected number of secondary cases caused by an index case in a fully susceptible population in the absence of interventions.

Results and Conclusions

Our estimations confirmed that Ebola haemorrhagic fever was predominantly transmitted to close contacts – mainly those who touched body secretions of the cases during the care of sick or even more so – in the final stage of the disease at hospital. We use the obtained parameter values in individual-based computer simulations to study the effects of various intervention strategies including case isolation, quarantine and the general change of behaviour of people in the social of spatial vicinity of known cases.

Acknowledgements

The MODELREL project received financial support from the EU and from the German Ministry of Health (GMDS).